• by Ray Schultz , October 29, 2021

Apple’s new iOS Mail Privacy Protection is generating billions of false opens per day, leading experts to wonder whether technology can solve the problem.

There is one addition that its developers hope will achieve that: CampaignGenius has debuted OpenGenius -- a cloud service that it says delivers email open metrics to vendors and high-volume senders in a privacy-compliant way. 

Why the urgency that surrounds the issue? 

“Apple’s MPP implementation has led many marketers that legitimately relied on opens as a measure of intent to be left without clear answers or direction,” says Ryan Phelan, managing director of RPE Origin and chairman emeritus of the Email Experience Council.

This abrupt change in measurement has disadvantaged companies and solutions are needed quickly.” 

Apple devices account for over 48% of email opens, according to Litmus.com. As iOS 15 adoption increases, the growing flood of false-open requests from iPhones and iPads is rendering conventional open metrics obsolete.  

"Apple knocked down the straw-man of 'spy pixels', but broke the most common signal of interest from email recipients with their approach." states Matthew Dunn, CEO of CampaignGenius. “Experts project over 90% adoption of ‘Mail Privacy Protection’ as iOS 15 rolls out.  Marketing platforms are already reporting dubiously sky-high open rates for all content, good or bad — just as the holiday season begins.” 

Open Genius uses what the company calls calls edge-of-network encryption and statistical modeling to project anonymous device-use patterns from message opens, including MPP ‘false opens.’ 

This measures how many, but not who. "Open Genius is not a technical hack around Apple; consumer privacy is protected,” Dunn says. 

The new tools  include instantly-deployable pixels, personalized images and other features that do not need to be integrated tools, on existing email platforms, the firm says. The firm provides vendor options including an AddOn for the BEE email editor, embeddable tools, white-labelling and IP licensing arrangements.